Monday, January 30, 2012

Sharkticon warrior by Hasbro/Takara

(I think the movie starts in 3 days)

My first introduction to the
Sharkticons was in the Transformers movie. The character was utilized
afterwards in the cartoon series, but their performance was most
memorable in the movie. Used as the personal army to the Quintessons,
the Sharkticons sole purpose was to catch intruders and either bring
them to so-called “justice” by their masters or render the
intruders to a scrap pile of leftover parts. When their Quintesson
masters delivered sentence (and it always ended poorly), the accused
was dropped into a watery pit full of these living garbage disposals
where their fate was ultimately to become a mere snack.

(innocent?)

The character is one of my top 5
favorites in the Transformers legend and it's gotten very little love
since the 80's. The design is really unique and hasn't been
replicated in years, rows of chrome teeth and eerie neon green eyes
are the main highlights on the figure. In primary mode he looks the
most show accurate. The large head that starts to tapper off as you
get closer to the tail, frail looking front arms offset by the larger
hind legs and the tail tipped with a spiked ball makes the character
look like more of a hybrid between a tadpole and a piranna. In robot
mode the design is kind of lacking. The best thing I can say about
it's robot mode is the head is amazingly accurate and well detailed.
The real overall detraction for me is the legs. I'm not sure if they
are to long but they are deffinately too close together, causing the
figure to be top heavy and suffering several face plants off my
shelves, risking damaging or breaking the toy.

Being a Transformer of the 80's, the
construction of the Sharkticon is sturdy but if you apply too much
pressure to the joints you'll run a risk of snapping the plastic
components. Newer Transformer toys are equipt with pressure sensitive
ball joints that purposely snap out of place when too much pressure
is applied. You simply snap the limb back in and continue playing, just that simple.
Many a Transformer of the 80's suffered battle wounds that had to be
super glued into place, ultimately ruining the play value and
eventually ending up in the garbage. But, such was the fate of many
toys and thus bringing about the sometimes unholy cost of purchasing
some of these toys from our childhood.